Comment by elsjaako

You've repeated the part that the parent poster claimed to understand ("I've heard that it's because farming as a business is full of unpredictability"), but skipped over the part they didn't understand ("wouldn't there be a significant market for private insurance?") with the statement that insurance is a parasite.

Can you explain more why insurance is a parasite? Maybe a state-run insurance would be better?

Subsidies (AFAIK, please correct me if I'm wrong) typically either get paid when farming supplies (tractors, seeds, fertilizer, land etc.) are bought or when the final product is sold. So they are paid when things go well for the farmer, but not (or less so) when the farmer has a bad year.

I feel like the risk of bad years would be better managed by paying farmers when bad years happen. You know, like insurance.